Month: October 2019

I survived in all my leagues, again. For the second week in a row, I made the dumb mistake of failing to substitute Tyreek Hill for Dede Westbrook, but no harm resulted, since Dede ended up with more points this week.

The average score for the 5 teams that got chopped in my leagues was 55.97. If you scored 63 points, you were safe in all my leagues. Here is the average score of chopped teams in certain other weeks.

Week 2: 62.6
Week 3: 70.45
Week 5: 73.95
Week 6: 69.1

I got this information from e-mails sent to me by Fanball, but I did not get e-mails in weeks 1 and 4.

Spending Report

For the first time, nobody spent over 500 on a player. Nobody even spent 400. Spending is reaching the point where I’m getting some good players: I got Ingram for 79, Keenan Allen for 65, Hunter Henry for 44, Julian Edelman for 43, Emmanuel Sanders for 35, Brandin Cooks for 31, Kareem Hunt for 22, and LeSean McCoy for 19. Here are the players in my 7 leagues who went for 20 or more FAAB:

Budget Report

There are 70 teams left, of which a grand total of 13 (19%) have over 500 FAAB. If you take away my 5 teams, all over 700, then only 8 out of 65 teams (12%) have half their FAAB left. In comparison, 26 teams (37%) have less than 10% of their budget left. Here’s the distribution:

I thought spending was cooling down as guillotine leaguers found Jesus. But I guess they found Jeebus instead. Last week there were only two bids of 400 or over in my seven leagues. This week, there were five. Here are all bids over 20.

In Gordon’s case I suspect this has to do with most people not believing he’s a superstar this year, and one person thinking he is and thinking that others think he is. In the other cases, I think this is a function of the big spenders not having a lot of money left, so players who would have gone for 300 in all leagues three weeks ago are only going for 300 in leagues where people who would spend 300 on them have money left.

Speaking of depleted treasuries, here is how little FAAB is left. Out of 7 x 11 = 77 teams in contention, this is the number of teams in each FAAB range:

There are as many teams with 100 FAAB or less as there are with more than 500 – in both cases, 21 teams.

My Team Updates

I made some lineup and auction mistakes due to being too busy to pay close attention. In my ESPN league I left Rex Burkhead in the lineup because I was at a wedding before game time when in was announced he was out. I also kept my bench stacked with injured players in that league (A.J. Green, Chris Herndon, Saquon Barkley) and T.Y. Hilton was on bye, so I had a real shortage of substitutes.

In my Green Knights league (named for the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), I made two bad mistakes. First, with Gurley anticipated to be out, I was left with only two RBS – Lev Bell and Rashaad Penny – and did not get a backup in case Penny was going to be inactive – as he was. And second, I forgot to put Tyreek Hill in the lineup, so played Dede Westbrook instead.

Nevertheless, I survived in all leagues. My ESPN league was very close – I needed about 14 points from Aaron Rodgers on Monday night to get out of last place. This week I’m in much better position with Saquon and Hilton back and Mike Williams and Jordan Howard claimed at auction (for $30 and $31). It’s a deep league (11 starters, 8 bench) so the latter are clear starters.

Another quick recap before I head off for my cousin-in-law’s wedding. I’m travelling this weekend, so I’m posting earlier than usual in case I don’t get to work on Saturday. That means that unlike in previous week, these totals do not include the (usually modest) Friday night/Saturday morning free agency spending.

This week is 12 team week. There are 12 teams left, so you can evaluate your roster based on how it would look in a 12-team league. I almost said “evaluate your team,” but that would leave out your FAAB total, which is enormously important in guillotine leagues. A weak roster with a strong FAAB advantage could be a better than a strong roster with little FAAB left, at this point.

As expected, bidding continues to cool off. No bids over 600, only one between 500 and 600, one between 400 and 500, and four between 300 and 400.

Here are all the winning bids of $25 or more in my seven Fanball leagues:

Overall spending has been higher than I anticipated, which is good for those teams that have survived without spending too much. There are now far more teams with half their budget left or less (52) than with 501 FAAB or more (32), and significantly more teams with 200 FAAB or less (23) than with 801 FAAB or more (15). The breakdown by hundreds is as follows:

My own totals in the 5 leagues that I remain alive in:
Rusty Blades: 919 (1 team has 1000 (but could be in trouble if it doesn’t get a TE today); nobody else has over 705)
Jacobin: 838 (2nd, 3rd and 4th teams have 808, 710 and 526; nobody else has over 500)
Green Knights: 888 (1st and 2nd place: 920 and 917 FAAB. Nobody else has over 600)
Sydney Carton: 947 (1st place 960; 3 other teams over 500, none over 750)
Bourgeoisie: 903 (3rd place after 986 and 940; no other teams over 700).

I lost another Fanball team this week, but not the one I thought. I was worried about Team Bourgeoisie, where I started Jameis Winston, Miles Sanders, Dede Westbrook and Paul Richardson, and Team Sydney Carton, where I started Kirk Cousins, Carlos Hyde, Melvin Gordon, and Larry Fitzgerald. Thos teams survived.

I was not too worried about Team Mine is the Earth and All that Is in It, but I lost. Eulogy below. I was nervoud about QB Kirk Cousins, an emergency fill-in for Jimmy Garoppolo, who was on bye. But I figured my other players – including Alvon Kamara, Will Fuller, Stefon Diggs, and Tyler Lockett – were good enough to let me survive. Wrong I was.

Self-evaluation

Some moves that I made that I probably shouldn’t have:

Drafting a QB and top WR from the same team. I advised against doing this in my 7 Tactics for Drafting in Guillotine Leagues article, on the grounds that fantasy scoring between these two positions meaningfully correlate. But I did it anyway in this league. To be honest, I wasn’t thinking carefully enough while drafting, and only realized afterwards that I made this mistake.

To correct this mistake, I got Jimmy Garoppolo off waivers. Which was a good move given that I made the mistake with Cousins – it’s just that my team got eliminated on his bye. A better move would have been to get Daniel Jones, who went for 10 FAAB (I spent 16 on Jimmy).

This move hurt me: When I found out on the weekend that Rashaad Penny wasn’t going to start, I went to my bench for a replacement and found nobody there. I hadn’t worried about it during the week, because I did not take the injury concerns too seriously. When it came close to game time, it was too late to switch in my other RBs who had 1:00 games, T.J. Yeldon and Kenyan Drake. Not that either of them scored enough points to save me. This is a rookie mistake, which only happened because I’m in too many leagues and didn’t take the time to set rosters carefully. But there’s a hidden lesson here for Fanball guillotine leagues, which have shallow benches and do not allow free agent pickups: by Friday evening’s waiver deadline, make sure your bench can handle an unexpected injury. That might include taking injury rumors more seriously that you would in other leagues.

Bidding Report

Spending has cooled off (only 11 bids over $200), but even so, I think there’s significant overspending, including two bids over 700 and three over 600. Here are all the players in my seven leagues that went for $25 or more.

The spending will only cool more in the coming weeks. This week you could get deals like Juju for 113 and Mack for 88. In the coming weeks, there will be better and better deals, allowing you to improve your team for cheap.

Eulogy for Team Mine is the Earth and All that Is in It

In case you didn’t get the team name, it is a reference to the first two lines and last two lines of Rudyard Kipling’s great poem “If”: